


The Faerie Contract

by cykelops



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fantasy, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Multi, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:47:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24844045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cykelops/pseuds/cykelops
Summary: In winter, Kaer Morhen offered witchers what life on the road could not: safety, peace of mind, and a dry bed to sleep in. Monsters, like animals, were generally inactive when temperatures fell, offering much needed respite for their hunters. Many witchers would stay on the Path, but Bishop returned home.Monsters could not follow witchers into Kaer Morhen, and they definitely did not come to the keep to post a contract for their own heads.
Relationships: Julio Richter/Shatterstar, Lucas Bishop/Remy LeBeau
Comments: 26
Kudos: 35





	1. The Druid Boy

**Author's Note:**

> \- You don't need to know anything about the Witcher for this, but not every term is immediately explained.  
> \- The Summers in question is Cable.   
> \- I spell it faerie and not fairy because I’m pretentious. Lore on fairies is borrowed from multiple books because while fairies exist in The Witcher, they’re not nearly as romantic as I’d like.

Bishop fed the fire in the evening hall. Winter took Kaer Morhen with a violence, and the only warm spaces in the whole keep outside their canopied beds were the carpeted semicircles around the roaring fires. Witchers were trained to resist their body's wants, all manner of hunger, exhaustion, and temptation to cozy up to their sheets past dawn, and that left them to huddle close to the soot-stained rock in the great halls. 

"He didn't mean anything by it." Bishop poked a sputtering log beneath the fresh three he layered. It split in half and poured ash from its core. He set the poker down and stepped away from the steadied flame. The fringed cushions on the nearby recliner welcomed his shape back into place. Similar benches lined the hall where residents of the keep came to enjoy each other's company. 

"He meant to humiliate me." Shatterstar said flatly. He sat on his heels, hands balled over his knees. Thick tears rolled without pause over his cheeks. His clouded eyes and indignantly red complexion, redder still around the birthmark surrounding one of his yellow eyes, were the lone indication his body knew it was crying. Wherein other men might pout and grimace, Shatterstar's face held smoothly forward. 

"Doesn't mean you should cry about it." Bishop mumbled, though he ought to have known better.

"There is nothing shameful about crying." Shatterstar was vocal about the value of free emotional expression. It was a peculiar stance which he sourced to a book from their library's apparently vast and diverse collection on ancient warrior cultures. Shatterstar was a stoic boy, never driven to frustrated tantrums as some of his denmates, though of an agitable temper. He didn't cry often, but far more publicly than other witchers his age, some who could have used a good cry themselves. Shatterstar wasn't very good at crying. Watching him like this, tear-streaked and stone-faced, Bishop understood the rumors that witchers were incapable of real feeling.

"Try to see it from his perspective. I know you can't possibly remember because you weren't alive then, but Summers and I were. Before you were raised here we used to have people in the keep. Normal people. Servants, bards, and witches. Much good came of it, but a great deal of bad, too. Your warlock _—_ "

"Druid." He corrected Bishop stiffly. 

"Your  _ druid _ ," Bishop appeased. "He's breaking a precedent that's nearly a century old." 

"There is no rule against it." Shatterstar turned his placid face and finally looked at Bishop, anger ablaze in his eyes. "He's my anchor. I can no more do without him than I can skewer the sun." 

Bishop tipped his head back in defeat and Shatterstar returned to glaring a hole in the floor. He was at a tender age. Witchers under a human life-span were romantic creatures. At least he chose well for a first love. Druid lives were tied to the land, homebodies more interested in preserving their territory than war and politics. He was likely to outlive Shatterstar and his mutagens when the dangers of the Path took him first. 

"Where is he now?" Bishop asked.

"In our rooms. He has not had the chance to commune with the soil here."

A lot of fancy words to say he was too cold to leave Shatterstar's bed. Poor bastard. 

"Look, Shatterstar." Bishop turned his sleeve out to reveal a smattering of symbols stitched in red thread. He circled his beard with his thumb and index finger. "This glyphword I have embroidered and enchanted in all my clothes. It uses Igni to create a mild burning effect that keeps me warm. It might need some adjustment so it won't burn your druid, but…"

"You would teach me?" He leaned across the rug to touch Bishop's sleeve. Disbelief and wonder climbed his voice. Shatterstar cast powerful signs and Igni was among his most used. 

"A runewright would have to activate it to connect the glyphword to your sign." Before Shatterstar could voice his disappointment, or more likely his intent to track down a runewright in the middle of winter thousands of miles from the nearest settlement, Bishop stopped him. "Summers has the skills of a runewright. When you calm down, you can ask him."

His hand dropped from Bishop's wrist. He looked displeased, but not disinclined to follow through. He nodded and swiped at his face until tears clung purely to his lashes. Bishop rubbed his gloved hands together and stood. 

"I will go get a hoop. You need to practice the words before you ruin your clothes." 

"Thank you, Bishop, for teaching me."

"We are brothers. Helping each other is what we do." 

Bishop left the evening hall, closing the door behind him. He hoped the end of their conversation was not too  _ on the nose _ to have an effect on the younger man. The last time Bishop saw Shatterstar cry four of the boy's denmates had died at their Trials. It was the first time Bishop was present for them since his own. He didn't think bearing witness could be worse than partaking, but with his enhanced senses there was nowhere in the keep where he could not hear their screams and, worse yet, smell their blood. Witchers were too few. Making it through the Trials was the beginning, after their bodies mutated past the point they could be considered human many died on the Path. Hunting monsters for coin was a thankless, dangerous job. Every day of a witcher's life was a lucky one. Turning on each other over trifles was borderline offensive.

Bishop's rooms were on the floor above the evening hall. He greeted some of the younger trainees on the way. They were working on the scaffolding by the stairs, a job best left to professionals if inviting outsiders into the keep were not too much of a gamble. They could gain intimate knowledge of the layout and use it against them the next time the nearby lords conjured a witcher purge to distract from taxes. Kings assassinated their builders to protect the secrets of their castles. Witchers were not kings. It was important Kaer Morhen was adequately fortified, but it was difficult to educate witchers on the finer arts of construction. Summers called a handful back every season to help with restoration efforts. Deft hands, superior strength, and long, idle hours in between contracts to think about crenellation made up for everything else. 

"When did he learn not to brag? He knows how to sew. He makes his own clothes." 

Summers waited for him at the top of the stairs, reclined against the rail. He was one of few men to stand taller than Bishop and older by a handful of moons. Mutagens had whitened his hair as a boy. Paired with the lines etched by stress on his face it aged him. Three scars fogged one of his cat eyes, similar to the light brown marks on Bishop's face, though his scars were not deep enough to blind. Summers idly traced Igni along his metal arm like he had been recently reminded of its uses beyond igniting flesh. It was unfair to blame a witcher for eavesdropping. Summers in particular was entrusted with special mutagens, too volatile for anyone else to survive, at his Trials.

"I know he can sew." Bishop walked past him and the taller man followed. His newly heated arm ensured Bishop slowed down and stuck close. He was angry at him on Shatterstar's behalf and didn't want Summers getting any ideas about Bishop defending his point of view to the younger man. "I think he needed to stop crying nearly as much as I wanted him to." 

"Because he's a man grown and those shouldn't cry?" Summers mocked. His voice softened as they came to Bishop's door, out of range of even Shatterstar's keen ears. "Or because when you look at him he's still five years old, scared out of his mind, asking you to make the cold go away?" 

Through Bishop's furred glove the doorknob burned him. He did not want to have that conversation sober, if at all. Witchers had excellent memories, but their recruits were orphaned children who would not remember the outside world. Summers handpicked Shatterstar and his denmates, brought them to the Wolf School at Kaer Morhen, and asked Bishop to stay a while off his Path and help train them. They were so young. Cleaning Shatterstar's fresh scrapes until he was man enough to be embarrassed by it blossomed into a protective instinct less brotherly than paternal. Bishop opened the door and let Summers into his room. 

"Your intentions were good, but you were cruel." He kept the sewing box somewhere. It was good practice. Witchers should know how to suture their own wounds, mend their clothes, and make their own fabric pouches. Shatterstar was proficient in all his studies, and excelled in craftsmanship as in everything else. He was another  _ special _ Witcher like Bishop and Summers, outfitted with experimental mutagens. The cocktail used on him went on to kill anyone else it was attempted on. "He's in love with that little druid, though I am not sure either of them know it."

"For all the good it will do them both. We will be lucky if we don't lose our best witcher because he's distracted making cow eyes." Summers remained against the door. Someone was in charge of coming into Bishop's rooms to clean when he was on the Path, but judging by the way he took everything in as if it were brand new it wasn't him. Bishop gathered his braids loosely and wrapped them with the leather cord he kept around his wrist to prevent spill over his shoulders when he leaned down to feel along the floor. A tall looking glass angled next to his wardrobe kept Summers in view.

"Druids are harmless."

"I hope you're right." Summers said, words stretched as he looked in the direction of Bishop's closed window. His tone didn't sit right with him. He alluded to a problem of  _ now _ , a problem that should not yet exist. 

"Alright. I don't like how you said that. Spit." 

"Druid had us raise the portcullis. He needed to  _ forage _ ." 

Bishop blinked. His cat eyes went instinctively to the window to squint at the distant forest. There was not much foraging to be done with snow packed so thick on the ground. Suddenly the argument in the hall and the creeping around the stairs reminding Bishop of Shatterstar's childhood made a lot more sense. Summers felt the druid couldn't be trusted and Shatterstar was not keeping a close enough eye. Much as Bishop did not want to admit any faults in his heart’s judgement, Star didn't even know he left their bed and maybe-- Summers was right. As for Summers following him to his room, it was marginally more burdensome to piece it together.

"You want me to follow the druid." Bishop sighed. 

Summers’ hand gripped his leather pauldron. Bishop’s winter armor was a rich black, layered from neck to boots, held together by clout-nails and lined in grey fur. Two straps joined him from shoulder to belt, his Wolf pendant hung over the center of his chest where they met. Red jeweled eyes glimmered faintly beneath the wolf’s silver brow. He was not likely to see a real fight in Kaer Morhen, Summers kept the old fortress clear of monsters for miles, but he was dressed for one. 

“All evidence to the contrary I want to give the druid a chance. You have a cool head. Whatever he’s doing out there, you will get to the bottom of it.” 

Bishop could argue both of them had the skills necessary to face a problem without distorting the evidence, it was part of being a witcher, but if Summers asked he clearly did not think he could do it himself. More practically, if he did find something Shatterstar might not take him at his word. Bishop, though, he would trust. After all, he had been more welcoming of his paramour than the other wolf. 

Bishop removed the hand from his shoulder without force or malcontent to reach the sewing box hiding beneath the skirt of his bed. The oak box separated into two lids beneath the handle, each adorned with a tree in low relief. He placed it in Summers’ hand. 

“You sew with the boy, and I will meander the woods pretending I am not in violation of his trust.”

Summers moved the box to his metal hand to test the prehensile capabilities of his steel fingers. The mechanisms inside his prosthetic were exceedingly capricious, worse in the cold, but the hand curled and held. 

“Don’t leave your weapons behind.” 

“Try not to forget your ass on the door.” Bishop answered bitterly, because it made as much sense as warning a witcher to keep his steel sword close and his silver sword closer outside the walls of Kaer Morhen. 

.•° ✿ °•.

Wind blowing from the east broke against the keep, the real threat of winter’s embrace. Harsh wind stole your breath, flung ice across your face, and made the world a misty haze that rendered even Bishop’s golden cat eyes useless. Without the keep, the cold would have been unbearable. Bishop watched his breath rise with every step he took in the packed snow. He drew the excess fabric of his hooded cowl over his mouth and nose. Spring melt would not come for weeks and the snow was a solid sheet beneath his feet. Treading through the forest was laborious, not impossible.  _ Point for the druid _ .

Tracks on the cleared dirt around the portcullis led into the snow but disappeared for almost a quarter of a mile. Witchers sensed where the tracks had  _ been  _ days after the fact and it was easy to trail him once he stepped off the beaten path. The druid moved on light feet. He avoided trampling even the stubborn weeds peering through the white veil. Witchers were trained to have minimal impact on the environment in the event they drew the attention of bandits or township guards, but the care taken in these tracks was to the benefit of the land, not the man who made them. He walked quickly and without stopping—footprints would have been deeper where he stood still—except to change direction, always avoiding the many sudden drops, steep climbs, and even animal dens Bishop knew about because they were mapped with great care by his brothers trained in cartography. Signs of foraging were noticeably missing on the way. The wolf on duty at the portcullis said the druid left an hour prior. The ground covered in the time Summers informed Bishop of his departure and the man followed should be half of what it was for someone unfamiliar with the mountain. Killer Trail was the only way off, and the druid altogether ignored it. Leaving could not be part of his plan unless he managed to grow wings. Descent without food or gear was a death sentence. Bishop could lazily attribute his progress to druid magic and dumb luck, but his gut told him that was wrong.  _ Point for Summers. _

Spatial awareness and a sharp sense of direction kept Bishop from growing confused and disoriented. Winter-bare trees on featureless white ground made it difficult to establish landmarks. However the druid got this far, he would not make it back on his own before his tracks blew flat. Bishop grunted into his cowl, at least he could pretend it was a rescue mission when Star asked why he followed the lad.

The druid brought Bishop to a toppled tree resting dangerously on a rock outcropping. It cut diagonally through an opening between the rocks, making an already tight squeeze more precarious. Pieces of black, rotted bark fell like hail over his head when he stepped carefully beneath the crooked giant. Bishop was relieved to find the way less daunting on the other side. The imposing rocks merely stood guard over a fair bit of flat, wood-less land. 

A few feet ahead, bound halfway to his knees by rolling snow and amidst a flurry of wind meaner than any to strike the stones of Kaer Morhen, stood his druid. The wind took his soft green cape and flapped it violently in the air, nearly ripping it from the brooch at his throat. His hood fell to reveal slick brown hair cut short around his ears. The druid turned mechanically like an automata missing oil in the joints. Deep red eyes, the color of those in Bishop’s medallion, directed their unfocused stare at him and cast him in an unsettling glow. It was not a natural turn, halfway around the waist with his back bowed, one arm limply hanging from his shoulder like he had forgotten how to work his body in unison. Snow streaked the paint framing his eyes and forehead across his face, staining his eyebrows and the tips of his lashes blue. He looked through Bishop as if he were a stranger or a whimsical component of the landscape, until his eyes fell on his chest and the wolf over his heart. The wild on his face cracked open and out came a paradoxical mix of hysterical relief. He blinked golden-brown pigment back into his eyes and stumbled towards Bishop like a newborn doe—every bit as awkward as a boy his age—and not the creature he was moments before. 

“Witcher!” He tried to place his name by the make of his armor. Bishop put him out of his misery by tugging off his cowl. The boy fell to his knees in front of him and gestured wildly with his arms. “Bishop—sir—Witcher! Can you hear them? Please, you have to help me. Their voice was loud and then— nothing. I tried to ask the wind but it would not...”

“Peace, Rictor. Take a breath.” Bishop said, calling him by the name he introduced himself with and not the one Shatterstar favored. Rictor took his offered arm and inelegantly slid across the snow. “You heard someone?”

“Yes! It was faint in the keep. I couldn’t be sure it was real, or how far, so I didn't tell Star... but it got louder in the woods. They were drawing on the land and crying out with all their strength. I don’t know if they understood what they were doing or that I heard, I just know they’re hurt and will die if I don’t help them.” Rictor hacked into his elbow and spit into the snow. His throat was ragged from running haphazardly in much thinner clothes than Bishop. Holding him up felt like a necessity because the druid could not find footing on his own. 

“It was likely a mischief-minded oread hoping you would waste away here or slip off the side of the mountain.” Bishop reasoned. “They like to play tricks on men.”

“No!” Rictor said angrily. He shook Bishop off and lurched towards the clearing. “I’m a  _ druid _ , nymphs cannot  _ fuck  _ with  _ my _ head.” 

Bishop could have believed him if he did not sound unsure himself. He recovered from his self-doubt admirably quickly, but it was in the crease of his brow. Walking for miles weighed down by a mounting dread and finding nothing, the certainty he felt leaving Kaer Morhen unraveled. Under all the wood and the snow Bishop smelled his fear.

“Listen!” The boy pleaded at Bishop’s skepticism. He grabbed the older man’s wrist and tugged forward without budging him. “Please just listen. I was close when their voice cut off. If I’m wrong— but if there’s someone out there who needs my help, I have to help them. It’s  _ my  _ Path.”

His attempt to appeal to a language Bishop would understand was too sincere to consider ham-handed. It was an unusual comparison. Witchers were mercenaries, druids were healers. Coin was the language witchers understood and druids gave their services freely, compelled by their duty to serve the land. Still, Rictor was asking very little of him. Listen he could do for free. Listen and then he could take him home and box his ears safely. “What am I listening for?” He whispered and closed his eyes.

Rictor swallowed. “A heartbeat.” 

The mountain screamed. He could not control the world around him, but he could measure with care what he took in. Rictor’s clammy hand ground leather and fur against Bishop’s wrist. The boy’s chest heaved painfully, it struggled to gather enough of the thin air through his cracked lips. His brown skin had taken a pallid shade and where the hair on his face wasn't the cerulean blue of druid paint it was frosted over white. There was his frightened heart, and Bishop’s even pulse. He was cold, wet, and uncomfortable. Impatient, frustrated, and yet— he kept going because he thought someone somewhere was colder, more uncomfortable, more afraid, and he wanted to help. Bishop dampened the vibrancy their bodies held and searched beyond, into the clearing. Mutagens came from animals and monsters. They were designed to increase speed, strength, resilience, and extend their senses so potently it was almost magic. Bishop smelled the boy's fear and heard water trickle off a cracked branch a league away. If there was anything out there, he was well equipped to find it.

A lark flapping its wings would make a greater ruckus. He almost missed it. When Bishop opened his eyes again he knew what he had heard faintly beneath the snow. 

A heartbeat.

“ _ Fuck _ .” 


	2. The Faerie Lord

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- A lot of stuff regarding medicine and geography in this universe doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I literally beg you to pretend it does.

The first Trial broke down their bodies. Trainees—not yet witchers, but no longer children—drank a variety of alchemical concoctions called grasses that attacked their nervous system, metabolism, and prepped their bodies transmutation. Pain unlike anything they had felt before wracked their bodies. They shook, cried, bled, hallucinated, and the unlucky ones vomited and started all over again. The physical exertion was grueling, but most nightmarish was the false peace of mind that accompanied it. It had the highest rate of survival. None of them could imagine greater agony after their nerves died one by one. 

And then it all grew back. They died half monsters and half men.

Werewolf mutagens promoted faster healing, a staple of a witcher’s genetic make-up from the end of their Trials. Those who could bear it continued toying with the balance of mutagens in their blood but most abstained. If they needed to be more than they were potions were the safer alternative. A funny thing to call it. _Safer._ Trace amounts of the potions witchers traded in would kill regular men, let alone the full dosages. 

Kaer Morhen kept a pharmacy stocked to the brim with every manner of medicinal plant. A herbalist’s dream. Learned witchers studied different combinations which when enchanted gave them their power. Witchers with high magical aptitude trained in alchemy, herbology, anatomy, and surgery. They oversaw the grasses used in the Trials and the medical needs of any witcher. They struggled. For all their enhancements witchers could not serve two callings requiring single-minded dedication. Duties not meant to be sidelined were when witchers craved the Path. In the last century progress in the field of mutagens staggered significantly. Once it was mages, not witchers, who played the role of physicians. Mages that lived in the keep, sworn to it, quietly ousted after purges took Viper and Bear and Witcher schools across the world closed to outsiders. 

Bishop had not seen a case of hypothermia in the halls of the Wolf school in almost one-hundred years because his brothers could resist the cold and kept humans at arm's length.

"Bishop…" Jubilee whispered beside him. She was a dark-haired girl and came up about Bishop's shoulders. One out of a truly frightening amount of daughters of Bishop's brother and sometimes friend Logan, she had been raised in the keep and initiated last spring. She was part of a small crowd of curious creatures her age gathered in the room adjacent the laboratory where five beds to convalesce in made a row along the wall. Kaer Morhen housed a rising number of souls every season—survivors of the purge and homesick witchers, but mostly pups. All apparently privy to a missive telling them to attend a rare show. "Are they gonna die?"

"The druid is helping them." Bishop murmured and would have ignored anyone else who asked. Jubilee was bolder than her brothers standing six feet behind them. He tried throwing them out, but the druid said their combined body heat was as good as an open hearth. 

"Druid doesn't look much better himself." 

Soft green light filled the room. The druid kneeled by his patient's bed, hands floating around the bloom pulsating through the crystal attached to the chain around his neck. It drew energy from the natural world and Rictor cultivated it year-round by pressing flowers into the pages of a journal, or so Bishop understood when the young man hastily explained it while they dragged the frozen body of his patient back to Kaer Morhen. He said a lot in that time to fill the silence and starve his fear, not all of it coherent. Shatterstar stood guard with both hands on his shoulders over the small mound of pelts warming Rictor, blank. Many of the gawking witchers left and came back carrying furs from their chambers once the supply of blankets in the room was insufficiently divided between the druid and the figure on the bed. For that alone Bishop would not tan their hides. 

Jubilee was right. Rictor fought to stay awake, but he was losing. A whole incense stick had burned to ash on the nearby mantle since the druid knelt to accelerate what healing warmth and time could provide. His head bobbled dangerously. Color returned to his cheeks and not to his fingers, bloodless and stiff. He needed to rest in his furs before his symptoms became more severe. Bishop came across him and tented his hands on the mattress. 

“Enough, Rictor. You have done what you can. The rest is up to them.” Bishop tucked the furs around his patient, unconscious of yet. The man on the bed was half a foot shorter than the witcher and he was in a bad state when they found him. No one looked their best after being dug up from under three feet of snow. He was cold and alive. Thanks to Rictor’s magic he was starting to look good—dangerously better than the druid, even. Rictor had removed his wet clothes and dried his body before Shatterstar stopped him and convinced him his health was just as important. Bishop enlisted to complete what work Rictor couldn’t and he made the call to move the patient to a fresh bed when the first was soaked beyond use.

“Just a little more…” Rictor coaxed. The light from the crystal flickered. It fell against Rictor’s chest. His hands cupped the empty air seemingly without notice. Bishop and Shatterstar made equally incredulous eye contact. The red-haired witcher gathered his lover in his arms and lifted him to the other bed. Rictor's head went limp and a moment later he was out. Shatterstar fell beside him, touched his forehead to his fisted hands over Rictor’s heart. The line of his back shivered. He smelled like anger and fear. Every witcher in the room found something interesting to look at elsewhere. 

“Bring me candles, all of you.” Bishop ordered. Body heat was good, but candles would not ask uncomfortable questions or generate nervous energy that could not be promoting anyone’s healing. If the outsider woke, he could not find himself among a sea of scrutinizing faces sometimes too curious to know what was socially acceptable. The witchers hesitated far longer than Bishop liked. “Now!”

Instead of scattering like moths, the young witchers stared wordlessly through Bishop. Jubilee came forth as the reluctant leader. She pointed past him. Bishop turned, medallion abruptly thrumming, and met the bare-chested man sitting upright on the bed.

“Hello.” The man said. He drew the furs close and shivered theatrically. 

He had a sharp face lined with an unkempt beard and knife-point cheekbones, sunken from travel and hunger. His body was angular, lean, but muscled. Scars from boyhood blemishes dotted his cheeks, something so familiarly human Bishop could not comprehend why under cover of his full lashes the whites of his eyes were pitch as night and his irises blood red, slit vertically by the same shade of tar-black. 

“You are probably wondering why I gathered you all here today.” The stranger said in jest, then promptly fainted back into his bed. 

.•° ✿ °•.

Bishop indulged the undisciplined habit of leaning far back on one creaky wooden chair. After bringing him candles, his younger counterparts cleared the scene. Shatterstar took Rictor back upstairs to better care for him in private. At Rictor's parting behest Bishop changed out of his armor into thicker clothes better suited for lounging indoors. He accepted the job of host to their unusual guest with Rictor indisposed. A brief discussion with Summers yielded some much-needed clarity on how to deal with him. He slept on beneath Bishop's lone pensive gaze.

The eyes. They would pique anyone's curiosity. They resembled a witcher's when potions took them and returned black bottomless pits, but the man was not a witcher and at the center of those pits he had eyes the shade of pomegranates. Witchers were not murderers, most of the time. Their directive was _not_ to eradicate any and all creatures of magic for the crime of _looking slightly different_. Summers felt similarly that measures more extraordinary than standing guard were not yet necessary. 

The stranger's possessions were helpful in revealing facts about his person. Examining his clothes, Bishop concluded they belonged to a man of means who knew better than to flaunt it on the road or be set upon by bandits. Tailored for comfort and cleanliness. Embroidered along the inner seam with a crest Bishop did not recognize and what was most likely a signature of its craftsman. Not cheap, though they did disguise their worth well. If the stranger had a travel bag it had been lost in the snow along with all its potentially telling contents. 

"I'm not here to eat anyone, you know." 

Bishop was not surprised to hear him speak. He stirred intermittently and it was only a matter of time before he awoke. Bishop's chair fell solid on the ground. 

"Much to your credit, you have yet to." Bishop said.

The stranger elbowed his body along the bed and against the headboard stiffly like someone recovering from the verge of freezing to death. He slumped where he sat but could better look at Bishop across the room. 

"I'm sorry if I scared your kids." 

"What's your name?" Bishop asked. 

"Remy LeBeau, son of Jean-Luc Laurent Emilien Dupont LeBeau, Marquis de Siahna, Champion of Melitele—and before you ask: yes, that's as short as he will let me make it." He winced, the cost of wit in his delicate state. He let a scratching cough into his elbow. 

"My lord." Bishop gave an awkward, belated bow. Temerian lords were not as prickly as Nilfgaardians, but the Wolf School in these parts had thus far survived a very long time treading carefully around noblemen. LeBeau's father was a Marquis and he introduced himself without a courtesy title, a story unto itself. Melitele was a goddess of fertility and rebirth. Bishop occasionally spent time in her temple in Ellander, but did not partake in her worship. "Are you cursed?"

LeBeau sputtered. "You witchers really aren't fond of circles, huh? Just straight to the point. Well, darling, yes and no— oh, you can, ah, dispense with the m'lords and all. Remy likes to hear Remy just fine."

He waited. Bishop's eyebrow twitched at _darling_ but he was impassive. A beat later he resumed. 

"I'm easy on the eyes, but my eyes are not easy on everyone else." The lordling laughed the way good performers did, sincerely amused by their own practiced jokes so long as the audience was new. "I am not human, though I can assure you my father is and you will find no member of his family inconvenienced by my burden. I eat as humans do, sleep as humans do, avoid iron and silver, and I don't dance in the moonlight drenched in virgin's blood. Here I would normally insert a joke about my sexual prowess but I see that you, my statuesque friend, would find it a fault in my character if I did."

Bishop listened attentively, working through the list of humanoids he was familiar with and waiting for boxes to tick. 

"My father is an idiot, a wonderful idiot, but an idiot nonetheless, and as an idiot twenty-six years younger he liked to do cartwheels in the woods to escape the pressure placed on him by unkind parents. They wanted him married to a girl and quickly, they demanded an heir. My father liked girls, but not well enough to marry."

LeBeau got this wider and wider look in his eyes, his confident voice never wavered though Bishop's silence between his dramatic pauses was to him, an orator more familiar with managing an overenthusiastic audience, an aberration. 

"I'm adopted." He said, finally. "I'm a faerie child, the sort they say you're supposed to ignore when they cry from the glade? But as we established earlier in our story: Father, Idiot."

"Not everything they say is true." Bishop sympathized, in part to stop the man from looking so comically heartbroken because he wasn't interrupting every other line of his tale with a question. 

"No." LeBeau smiled. "I imagine it's the same with witchers." 

"Most people this far into a conversation with me ask what of it is true."

LeBeau tilted his head, brought three fingers to his cheek and delicately placed the smallest one under his chin. A courtier gesture, honed and indistinguishable from any by a human-born Temerian lord. Someone had educated him well in all the empty fluff of court life. Maybe his father, a governess, and a string of tutors. 

"If we are anything alike, you tell them _all of it and none of it_ _depending on my mood_." 

"Your business then in Kaer Morhen, my lord?" Bishop pivoted. LeBeau had an exhausting personality. Nine out of every ten words out of his mouth were needless accessories, Bishop would have found it entertaining if they had met in a tavern, or in LeBeau's court, but as it pertained to witcher work he could do without it. 

LeBeau pointed at the bed on his right. "There was a young man here. He saved my life. I want to thank him. He tried to sing to keep me awake. I don't speak the language but it was very beautiful." 

"Rictor."

"Yes, thank you. I'm sorry I didn't ask for your name, I heard it before. I woke up after you dug me out but couldn't speak. Rictor called you Bishop. Thank you, Bishop, for saving my life and for not keeping a sword to my throat after you saw my eyes." 

"Witchers do not pass judgment based on appearance alone and without a contract on your head we would have no reason to take it."

The other man's eyes fluttered, downcast. His mouth stretched and thinned into a pale smile. Eye contact he had searched for and held, red to gold, throughout his story fell away. It had grown dark outside and the wall of candles Bishop lit for extra warmth brightened his angular face. 

"That brings us to the matter of my business here." He breathed. "Witcher, I have come to offer a contract on my head." 

"Unprecedented." Bishop masked his surprise well. He had embarked on a multitude of truly strange quests in his life and never before been asked to fulfill someone’s death wish in as many words. 

“My father was allowed to keep me because he lied about bedding my mother. We are not blood kin and I am not half-human. I was named his heir because he paraded the Knowing Ones through court and paid them to seal my faerie nature with the help of a magic ring.”

He raised his left hand. There was a band of pale skin around his finger where a ring wasn’t. 

“It worked until it didn’t. After all, they were trying to seal _half_ a faerie.”

The memory took LeBeau out of the room. He recalled it out loud, a distant look on his face, and while the story of his father was upbeat—belittling him and himself in good humor— _this_ was a different tale.

“Two months ago my father held a banquet in my honor to brag about his heir just returned from Oxenfurt Academy after mastering the seven liberal arts. I had been there for so long, assisting teachers in hopes of becoming one myself, and he missed me. He was so excited he sent food to the lower towns, not just bread and grain as usual, but cake and duck confit and gods only know what—I put them all to sleep, witcher. The whole city. I don’t know how, but I know it was me. I was at a banquet in my honor and I forgot what I was. The ring suddenly cracked in two and Remy was reminded.” 

Lordlings, like ones educated at Oxenfurt Academy, added signature flairs to their speech in hopes of recognition and imitation. The quirks in LeBeau’s did not strike Bishop as purposeful fabrication. Outside his stage persona, he struggled with some words, lapsed into the third person. This had little to do with being a faerie and therefore little to do with the witcher, but Bishop paid it care anyway. Like the soft red imprints on his cheeks, they were characteristics unique to him that might go unnoticed. With a job where he encountered dopplers, changelings, and sorcerers adept in illusion-making, it was good form to remember the little things. 

Again the man misinterpreted Bishop’s silence and he puffed up like a wild hen. 

“Faeries cannot lie, so you can trust anything I say. My spells should not hold after I’m dead.” 

“Faeries cannot lie, but they can misrepresent what they know.” Bishop corrected, quoted straight from a codex titled _Fae_. “Did you remain after the spell was cast? Did people seem thinner? Did they expire?”

LeBeau covered his face against it. “No! For a fortnight I tried to reverse it, but I never learned how to use these— powers. When I left they were alive. Will they be when they wake? Will the weeks spent without food and water catch up and kill them before they’re fully risen?” 

“Those parameters would be set by the spellcaster.” Bishop offered. 

“He’s my father. They’re my people. I would not want them to die.” LeBeau said hoarsely. 

“Then why should you? You didn’t mean to hurt them. Spells can be lifted, frequently without spilling blood.” 

Senselessly killing an articulate creature capable of regret if not self-control was not in the witcher playbook. To save a life and in self-defense Bishop would cut him down as he would anyone, human or not, but not naked, half-frozen, and nearly crying over his dear, sleeping father and court. 

Perhaps not nearly crying. Bishop was being unfair, but not as much as the story-telling faerie was being irrational. 

“Could you lift it, witcher?” He asked, evidently more hopeful of Bishop’s brand of detached reassurance than the man himself. Like Shatterstar crying, like Rictor on his knees pleading, Bishop _wanted_ to help but was not wholly comfortable. 

“If not I, then a sorceress.”

“I know a sorceress.” LeBeau came up and sat cross-legged, bobbling onto his knees, marks of the man he was when he wasn’t frostbitten, unable to sit rightly still. 

“Why did you not go to her? Why come to Kaer Morhen? Surely the way to her was less terrible.”

“She’s an old friend. She might have looked at me differently for what I did. I am a coward.” LeBeau smiled faintly, without the weight of sadness or the mask-like quality that accompanied his retellings. “You look at me like I’m stupid. It makes my problems seem… smaller.”

Bishop blinked. His questions taken care of with only minor pulling of teeth, he could inform his brothers of the development. He was sure Rictor would want to know what became of his patient, check on him, and be a more receptive ear to his emotional woes than Bishop could be paid to be. Ever. He took his contracts from billboards and viceroys because lords and ladies were pompous, spoiled children with too much power and worse yet, intolerable bores, always swindling their way out of honest pay for honest work when they could get away with it. Being a faerie did not negate the other strikes against his good standing. Bishop opened the door of the sick room to the soft bubbling sounds of the laboratory. 

“Rest now. In the morning I will introduce you to some witchers who might take your case.” 

“Oh. I thought you might.” LeBeau’s brow furrowed, his voice rose like a question. He traced a circle on the back of his hand absent-mindedly. 

“No.” said Bishop and left. 


	3. The Rector

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Thank you everybody who’s been commenting, leaving kudos, etc. Please continue! You make it so easy to write every day, something I am unusually unable to do, and I’m happy about that.  
> \- There might be some minor grammar errors all over and it’s because I’m clumsy when I edit. I come back to it all the time and fix stuff, please be patient and I’ll correct it myself.  
> \- I will be adding character and trigger tags as they appear and warning about stuff at the beginning of the chapter.  
> -This fic has *FANART*, please take a look at this [perfect piece](https://say-cyke-rn.tumblr.com/post/621926252861964288/i-felt-compelled-to-draw-fanart-for-cykelops) based on a scene from Ch. 2 by say-cyke-rn on Tumblr.

"What's the faerie like, Bishop?"

Jubilee teetered on a row of wooden stakes twelve feet off the ground. More than agile enough to manage without a foot out of place, she played at losing her balance for her own amusement only to regain it and take the next stake. Like the other two young witchers in the training field she wore a white tunic under a leather vest and loose wool breeches. Constant exercise was their warmth. Closer to the hay-stuffed men used for target practice, Monet and Chamber sparred at languid speed, stopping frequently to tap and adjust each other with their wooden swords. Bishop could have told them what they were doing wrong. Every time Jubilee hopped, stumbled, and righted herself they jerked reflexively, ruining their form. 

"I know you're not talking to me without finishing that course, young lady." A reluctant smile pinched Bishop’s cheek. Jubilee latched onto the minute twitch like blood in the water, clearing the last stake in the likeness of a siren vaulting over the waves and landing gracefully on a patch of dirt. Monet’s sword lowered to the ground as she watched her, curious. Her sparring partner mumbled something into the back of his hand. For Bishop it was lost in the wind, but for Monet it was enough to slam her lead foot forward and lunge with the flat of her sword, throwing him to the ground with her weight before he could parry. Jubilee jogged to Bishop’s vantage point on the deck overlooking the training yard and climbed the makeshift rudders nailed to the sides of a wide post to join him. 

“Summers wants one of us to take his contract. LeBeau is a Temerian lord. If he pays us in any orens he’s got lying around we get an excuse to visit Novigrad next thing.” 

“You don’t need an excuse to visit Novigrad. You’re a witcher, the Path is yours to—“

Jubilee gripped the edge of the deck, tossed her body back and groaned. Bewildered, Bishop cocked his head. 

“That’s what you  _ say,  _ but you, Summers, and Banshee all get this look on your face whenever we talk about anything that isn’t a dingy little village in the middle of griffin-fucked Sodden.”

“They pay crowns in griffin-fucked Sodden.” Bishop reminded her. “The people there could use you more, too.” 

“I  _ know _ that.” 

She kicked her legs petulantly. One untied boot escaped from her foot and she rushed to catch it. Bishop cautiously held her by the back of her vest to stop her from slipping. No surface was secure after snowfall, no matter how long it had been cleared. It wasn’t a steep drop, but he didn’t want either of them to crack their heads. Jubilee hugged the boot to her chest. 

“I am sixteen and I have never seen the free city. Or anything, really.” She grumbled. 

Bishop leaned back on one hand and hung his arm over his knee.  _ Sixteen _ . He tried not to think about how old the kids were turning. When the medallions passed to them he tried not to think of them as children— he often failed. He wanted to tell her she could be a child a while longer, that the great big world would be there for a long time to come, but she wouldn’t have thanked him for treating her like a pup. Subterfuge was vital in dealing with brazen young witchers. 

“I don’t know if you’re ready. Some farmhand could trade you magic seeds for a kelpie contract and then we would have to deal with a beanstalk poking through the clouds, leading the Wild Hunt to Kaer Morhen.” Bishop hummed. He broke character and laughed when she shoved his arm. Jubilee tucked her foot back into her boot and doubled the knots on her laces. He clapped her shoulder. 

“When I was your age I asked Kadee, my mentor and the witcher who brought me into the guild, when she thought I would be ready to leave.  _ When it hurts, Bishop,  _ she told me. Do you know what she meant?” 

Jubilee pondered a moment. She shook her head.

“When watching your brothers leave—as I watched her—hurts like they might never come back— Then.” A snowflake tickled Bishop’s eye and he wiped his lashes with his thumb. Down in the courtyard, Monet and Chamber stretched and prepared to head indoors to break their fast. Differences seemingly forgotten, they chatted amiably. Bishop flicked his hand towards the horizon. “We have a responsibility to thin out evil in this world. For each other.” 

“Where is Banshee now? Where is Logan, Bishop?” 

Bishop looked at her with mild shock. He saw a shadow of the boy he was at sixteen beside her. Skilled, resilient, powerful, afraid. He remembered the day Kadee left and did not return. The sides of his medallion dug sharply into his palm. Her round face bittered. Jubilee struck her fist against the center of her chest. 

“It already hurts.”

They sat together through the breakfast bell. Wordless understanding flowed between them, growing into something solid enough to comfort. 

.•° ✿ °•.

Bishop fixed a small plate of bread and cheese to break his fast. Two meals or less were enough on the road but there was little reason to limit oneself where food was plentiful. Breakfast was a group activity for Bishop most days, but he was not feeling sociable after the surprisingly bleak conversation with Jubilee. He passed Shatterstar on the way back to his room and the red-haired man shared how Rictor took food up to LeBeau that morning. He was showing all the signs of a quick recovery and the damage—frostbite included—was miraculously reversed. 

"Bet my breakfast being a faerie has something to do with it." Bishop guessed.

"More to do with Rictor's healing magic." Shatterstar responded. Pride in his paramour colored his face. Being half right, he stole a slice of cheese off Bishop's plate before they parted ways. 

He should have given himself more than overnight to put together candidates to carry off the faerie contract. Though he could name many in the guild with the power to reverse a spell like the one LeBeau described, he wouldn't wish potential months of travel with the man upon any of them.

Bishop enjoyed a quiet moment in his rooms. In a sunlit chair by the window he could ignore the cold. It was a place he called all his own. He slept in borrowed spaces; inns, campfires, and hospitable temples. His canopied bed, his books, his trinkets, where he wasn't likely to be randomly attacked in his sleep were a nice variation but, not just because his job demanded it, he couldn't imagine living every day coming back there. He would get bored. Bishop tore a piece of soft bread, freshly baked. In Novigrad, the smell of fresh-baked bread, spices, and good wine permeated the market district. The Continent was saturated with color and flavor. Bishop’s room and its comfort was a reflection of things he’d found by leaving home. The thrill of riding, sailing, loving, and fighting was not a passable gift. Bishop liked to travel. He loved to see the world, meet new people, go forth into the unknown, always.

_ Why _ wasn't he taking the faerie contract? 

Bad vibes, mostly. LeBeau's case was practically gift wrapped. He could hear the ballad now.  _ Arrived at his doorstep—to his uncontested benefit—a lord, a poet, a faerie; lured back to his kingdom a witcher, a savior, an idiot.  _ Bards sang about foolish witchers for laughs if they were lucky. Tragedies made more memorable stories. Bishop held no intention of letting his life fit either description.  LeBeau's contract came with  _ baggage.  _ Bishop knew his ilk, capable of unloading it thoughtlessly on perfect strangers with problems he deemed inferior. Bishop shook his head. Even if he was dead wrong, what reason did he have to give the other man a chance to prove it besides a professional curiosity on his curse? 

He shifted and crossed his legs. To contemplate the subject to that extent, he must already be bored of the safety of Kaer Morhen. 

Two raps sounded on the door. It swung open and the top half of Summers' body entered the room. 

"Come in." Bishop muttered, pushing his plate away. 

"Excuse me, I didn't mean to interrupt your cheese hour." The other witcher said, scanning the room, sarcasm thick on his tongue. He backed onto his foot to peer down the hall. He was jittery, unlike himself, but Bishop would not deign his snippy retort with an answer. 

"Can you take a xenovox in the library?" Summers asked, more politely. He looked apologetic enough for the interruption to stir Bishop's good will. 

"Who from?" They kept xenoboxes from various sorcerers friendly to their guild. Enchanted gears carried their voices regardless of distance. 

"Rector Ororo Munroe." 

He managed to duck before Bishop's last piece of bread hit him in the face. It flew over his white head and hit the window opposite his room. 

"Are you short of a marble? Open with that!" 

Summers, crouched close to the ground, snapped his fingers and pointed at him. He smiled. 

"Fuck you."

He rose towards the library. Bishop stopped to fix his tunic in the mirror. The xenovox did not project visuals, but  _ Bishop  _ would know if he wasn't presentable for a call with the Rector of Aretuza, a prestigious academy for young mages. 

The library was the largest room in the keep. Long, packed with four rows of shelves and the musky scent of old books. Tucked away among them were reading nooks, cushioned chairs with tall stacks of well-worn tomes like arms on a throne. Readings in progress. Book learning was as important to witchers as knowing how to wield a weapon. 

Ororo's xenovox resembled a claw-foot music box. Gold filigree framed its elegant body in fluid curves. A stunning jeweled camellia made the knob on the lid, its yellow center four citrine beads. Summers left him to it, said it wasn't his business unless Bishop chose to make it. The box felt cool on his fingers. 

"Hello?" Bishop tested. Xenovox communication could be complex. Ororo played the box to alert them, but she wouldn't hear Bishop unless the line was already open on her end. 

"Hello, Bishop! I'm glad I could reach you at Kaer Morhen. How are you?" Her melodious voice left the box like music should. Forge—her enchanter— had built the device. There was none of the crackle that marked magical exchanges of poorer craftsmanship. Her voice was as clear as if she were standing next to him. Bishop pictured the elven sorceress to bridge the impersonal feel of the xenovox. Her black skin, white hair, and small, tapered ears. Any witch could trap lightning in a bottle, but with her stormcloud eyes Ororo conjured tempests out of thin air. 

"I'm well, thank you. How are you? I have Summers to thank for your company, I was not in the library when you first called." 

"I wish I had a better reason." She sighed. "I know witchers winter at Kaer Morhen because the season is harsh in the Continent, but I need your help."

"Anything I can do for you, please."

"It's rather urgent. You would have to descend the mountain right away and that would be the  _ easy  _ part. I can help with that; pull the ice winds away from Kaer Morhen." 

"Name it." Bishop insisted. He could make it through Killer Trail during winter in one piece and had done it before, though he was always interested in watching Ororo's magic work. He wouldn't turn down the extra security of knowing a blizzard wouldn't sneak up on him halfway down. 

"A friend here in Temeria has stopped responding to my missives. I tried sending birds to everyone close to the good lord, including his son. He's a dear friend of mine, a great supporter of the academy. He's one of the lords I send my children to for their first taste of court because I know they will be safe. Katherine spent a few months in their company just before his replies stopped."

Bishop nodded. He was in acquaintance with some of the lords—even a king—to whom Ororo extended her friendship. The mages had their lord’s attention, and when a monster appeared it was them who whispered about witchers in their ear. Katherine was a mage around Jubilee’s age, like witchers they ventured beyond schooling very young.

"Did she notice anything strange while she was there?"

"An unusual amount of residual magical energy. She attributed it to the Marquis' son being a faerie." 

Bishop almost took his hand off the box. A Marquis. His son. A city gone dark. How small and bizarre the world was. 

"Your friend—the son—he wouldn't happen to be Remy LeBeau?" 

"You've heard of him!" 

"I'm afraid I've met him. He travelled to Kaer Morhen and now resides with us."

"Bishop, you don't know how relieved I am to hear— Why?" She wisely questioned. Under the circumstances of his father's silence, it was clear to her that his was not a trip made for pleasure. 

"A spell put Siahna to sleep. The whole city is trapped. We have agreed to help him lift it, though it wasn't what he asked for when he arrived." 

"Oh, Remy… Why wouldn't you come to me?" Ororo despaired. She knew him well enough that Bishop need not clarify what he had come to ask. 

"He was afraid." Bishop told her. It was in line with what the faerie had said. 

"Please, help him, Bishop. Jean-Luc and Remy are staunch defenders of my students in Temeria. When mages flee from other lords, they flee with the help of Siahna and the LeBeau family." 

Mages rose at court. It was in their best interest to seek out a lord who would sponsor them. They did favors for the lord's family and his people in return for protection and a place to further hone their craft. Their services included healing, entertainment, astronomical readings, prophetic visions, depending on the mage's expertise. Sometimes the lords forgot their role, became something mages needed protection  _ from _ . Having a court mage signaled wealth, status, and power. They weren't easily let go. Once word spread about a poor host, no other sorcerer would willingly take their place. It surprised Bishop LeBeau risked the ire of his peers. 

"How did Marquis LeBeau get away with that, politically speaking?" 

"He's hardly cut from the same cloth. The other lords ignore him. He made his fortune as a smuggler after he inherited the political title from parents who left him and their territory destitute. This is not known. At glance, LeBeau is a blue-blooded buffoon who throws all his crowns to the Cult of Melitele." 

"Champion of Melitele." Bishop mused, remembering how LeBeau introduced his father. "A clever ruse." 

"Not entirely. The Marquis funds us, in part, and just about everyone who will take his gold. As he puts it: he can always steal more." She laughed sadly. Somewhere that friend slept restlessly. Bishop sensed it perturbed her. "Aretuza is about as far from Siahna as Kaer Morhen. If you take this contract to save the city, I will have a sorceress meet you there. They might have use for both our vocations." 

"LeBeau's contract, or your's?" Bishop tentatively asked. 

"Your choice, my friend, but you'd be wise to take LeBeau's coin." 

LeBeau's fortune being what she made of it, she was right. Bishop couldn't see himself naming a price for saving Ororo's friend, and by extension LeBeau’s father. She was near and dear to his heart. Aretuza and Kaer Morhen were slowly building a relationship that might see mages inhabit the keep once again. 

"I would do this for you." Bishop decided. "LeBeau I would help, yes, but if only him I would help through another. To you and the mages of Aretuza I give my blades." 

"Thank you, Bishop." Ororo said in evident relief. "Aretuza will not forget this." 

Bishop picked up the xenovox. He held it as gently, with respect, as an extension of the woman herself. 

"I will inform LeBeau of this development, Rector. I'm sure you would like to talk to him. You should know something about the circumstances in which he arrived here..." 

While Bishop caught her up to speed and left the library towards LeBeau’s sick room, he looked around and found the keep oddly deserted. Breakfast had ended and most witchers should be about their duties. The stables, visible through the high windows, along with the courtyard, the garden, and the scaffolding by the stairs were nearly empty— nearly. Witchers Bishop’s age could be spotted at their posts, but their tenderfoot brethren were in the wind. He thought back to Summers in his rooms, eyes narrowed as if searching for something. Bishop tucked the xenovox under his arm and leaned over the balustrade overlooking the entrance hall from the third floor of the keep to speak to the man lying on the scaffolding by the wide stairs across. 

“Wade, what’s going on? Where are the kids?” 

Wade’s arm stretched over open air. His chin snug against his shoulder. He had dropped as soon as Bishop rounded the corner, but the witcher paid it little notice. The scarred man delighted in absurd pranks enjoyable for no one else. 

“The kids took the day off. I was outnumbered, Bishop. Ten to one. I couldn’t stop them.” He held his breast dramatically. “I’ve suffered, and all I’m bid in return is this cameo.” 

“Huh?”

Wade shot up and pulled at the silver chain around his neck. Where his Manticore school medallion should be was instead a round pendant, about as large as a thumb print. Bishop’s cat eyes focused on the portrait carved there. It appeared to be Summers, coral white inside a golden frame of ivy leaves. 

“They traded me a day’s leave for it, but Nathan’s going to be  _ pissed _ .”

Bishop stared at him. He thought of telling the other man Summers’ affections would be better gained by showing a modicum of responsibility in his role as mentor than by devotion to his image. Bishop realized that would require talking to Wade some more, and choosing his battles shrewdly he opted for surrender. He raised his hand goodbye. Remebering how curious Jubilee had been about the faerie, Bishop had an idea where the pups had gone. 


	4. A Mildew Melody

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- This is technically a dark fantasy story, but there are some elements of that I don’t enjoy like “”realistic”” homophobia and misogyny which I won’t write. There will be abuse, injustice, violence, and gore, but I am not here to toss up misery for the sake of misery. This has a happy ending.  
> \- I have about 18 chapters planned, and I can promise you a slow, slow burn with a heavy plot. Bear with me, folks.

The clamor was audible from outside the laboratory. Rhythmic clapping shook the door as he stepped through. He heard singing, the words too muffled to discern. He couldn't fathom what they were up to in the sick room besides giving Summers a fresh migraine. He had anticipated ten or so young witchers poking about the faerie’s room, the rest taking advantage of their bravado fled to the woods to play at hunting. There had to be many, many more. Their eager heartbeats louder to Bishop than the song. He understood how the pups bribed Wade to relieve them of their chores, but the instructors in charge of the bailey weren't as malleable. Woe to them if they had hightailed it without so much as a by-your-leave. 

Bishop entered the sick room, greeted by the backs of the young witchers. Some sitting on the floor or standing against the wall. There were so many of them, they hardly fit at all. The beds hadn’t been moved. Fortunate pups climbed on the soft mattresses, or as far as atop the headboard, to make space for their siblings. Clothes adorned the windows and darkened the room; grand drapes of linen. Center stage stood LeBeau with a gutted trunk bleeding taffeta, muslin, and charmeuse. A muffin-top hat in a shade of lavender relaxed its crown over his ear. Pinned at a slant, a long, golden brown feather Bishop recognised as griffin brushed his neck. His form-fitting doublet, slashed at the puffy sleeves, was the same soft color as the cap, accented with white brocade and ornate bone buttons. Fine cotton breeches, white as _I could afford to have these replaced any day,_ hugged his long legs. The clothes couldn't be his. The leather chest bore the symbol of the Wolf. More likely they belonged to a troubadour who had dazzled the walls of Kaer Morhen before anyone else present had been born. He inferred the chest had preserved the high quality garments, albeit with the fragrance of mildew. LeBeau strummed a lute over the gilded wolf rosette, it shone as if freshly varnished. Bishop remembered that lute, though he had been as young as the pups now were when he’d last seen it, and strangely it hadn't aged a day. 

There was an energy in the air found in theaters. Where the audience became a throng of feelings, fluctuating on specific emotions excited by the stage. The kids knew about bards, they had heard and sang music, some of them even played an instrument, but a master graduated from Oxenfurt Academy was altogether another beast. LeBeau boasted a repertoire that included slow-paced songs in Elder, the language of the elves, mages, and scholars, the likes of which he sung then, one bare foot perched on the side of the chest. 

_The scholar did toil; sun over moon,_

_through seasons and shifts in the sky._

_He died without wives, children, or mistresses,_

_a little black bird by his side._

_'Tell me, scholar,' said the bird_

_'Any last wisdom you'd like to impart?'_

_The scholar thought of stars,_

_and knowledge incurred,_

_of potions of monkshood and tongue,_

_with the last of his breath he said to the bird,_

_'O, how I envy the young!'_

LeBeau threw his head back so far he had to hold onto his cap. He laughed. The young witchers cackled amongst themselves, whipped up by his antics of climbing and falling dead on the leather chest as his pandering song progressed. It rhymed better in Elder. Bishop could have provided a more accurate translation were he not zeroing in on the pink dust shimmering across LeBeau’s attire. Magic. A spell so inconspicuous his medallion went unbothered. The scent of mildew had disappeared. 

He was ready to cast Axii if things started to turn sideways. He believed the faerie lord's claim that he had not _meant_ to bewitch his people. That made Bishop doubly prudent. He might not _mean_ to enthrall the young witchers, whose resistance to sorcery was not yet fully developed, and who might not realize trouble was brewing until it was too late. Axii was one of the gentler signs, assuming losing control of one's mind and as an extension one's body wasn't inherently violent. Its hypnotic effects calmed animals, hexed enemies to fight at Bishop's side. He couldn't be sure it would impede LeBeau from casting spells when he clearly didn't know he was doing it. If it failed, then Aard, a psychokinetic sign that stunned with force determined by the caster, would knock him out cold. 

“Bishop!” 

He was spotted. LeBeau put aside his lute, rolled onto the floor, pushed himself up onto his knee, and stood with flair. He didn't _look_ like someone about to curse the keep. Horrified little faces followed in acknowledging Bishop’s entrance. They looked at his signature black leather armor and the thin silk ribbons braided into his hair and gulped. He would make sure their instructors drilled awareness exercises back into them for not noticing him sooner. 

Bishop placed Ororo’s xenovox on the table to better project his displeasure. As he circled the area with both hands at his waist, changes in the room became apparent. The candles he’d lit the day prior had been gathered into a woven-basket and the wax cleared. Another basket in the corner by a mop and bucket contained the blankets and furs used to keep LeBeau and Rictor warm. Someone had cleaned the room, collected the sheets to launder, and put together tins of cloves and other aromatics to kill the sickness-scent. He guessed they’d brought the trunk and lute too, to raise his spirits with clothes familiar to the faerie lord. Bishop stared warily at the pups. Innocent blinks and smug smiles confirmed his suspicions. 

“Scram now and I will tell Summers I gave you permission to be here.” Bishop grumbled. 

For once, they listened to him, and scrambled to their feet quickly but triumphantly. They thanked Gambit for the song and avoided Bishop's eyes lest he single any one of them out to report to their instructors. Chamber picked up the laundry basket and fearlessly tipped his head to Bishop while his denmates herded him out the door. They were good. Bishop almost hoped Summers let them get away with it.

“Thank you for visiting!” LeBeau cried after them, wringing his hands together. He seemed saddened by their departure. At least he knew better than to contradict the older witcher’s word. His black-red eyes smiled at Bishop. “They brought Remy these nice clothes, sweet things. Hope they don't get in trouble for keeping an old faerie company. I was about to sing them a song about you! Would you like to hear?”

"Some other time." Bishop lied. Anything LeBeau had composed about the witcher could not be flattering. 

“Are you sure? It’s a song about a great hero—a witcher—who saves a dying bard from Wild Hunt’s cruel grasp— Alright. It’s about Rictor, mostly, and I’ve never seen the Wild Hunt, but it’s better than the story about a lordling caught in a snowstorm being dragged four miles with his ass scraping the floor.” He rambled. 

Bishop wanted to interrogate him about the clothes, primarily to answer his gut’s hunch that he may not have been _aware_ of the change he had put them and the lute through, but it felt… cruel. He was trying to impress Bishop's guild brothers. Put on a show to thank them for making him welcome. Implying he could have hurt them, true as it may be, went against the gesture. 

Bishop said nothing. He tucked an errant braid behind his ear. 

He swung his arm in an arc. “Rector Ororo Munroe, to speak to the gentleman.” 

Blood drained from LeBeau’s face. He looked between Bishop and the box, awaiting the punchline. When it did not come, his back went rigid. 

“Gambit, have I a bone to pick with you!” The box was heard. 

“Darling, dear… I have been a poor friend—” LeBeau appeased, rushing ahead of the tempest. He flattened his hands forward to fan down the flames of her temper. He spoke to the box like the Rector was right there in front of him. 

“What stopped you from asking for my help? Bishop tells me you arrived at the keep demanding execution. I will smite you right this moment if you continue down that path.” Ororo chided warmly, unconcerned by the paradoxical quality of her warning. 

“Gambit?” Bishop lapsed behind. 

“Performance name. Chosen by friends and followers from my debut piece, _Fool’s Gambit._ ” LeBeau stage whispered. 

“I would have gone with _Fool_.” 

Bishop’s jab made the fool snicker and then he whirled his attention back to the xenovox like the aside never transpired. 

“Forgive this coward, Bright Lady. I passed many a friend on the road to Kaer Morhen and besmirched our bond similarly. The slight was not personal.” He said poetically, bowing to the box. Gambit—LeBeau spun a chair close to the table and straddled it. He folded his arms over the chair’s back and fit his chin in the bend of one elbow. “Sorry, ‘Ro. I fucked up.”

“I’m so sorry, Remy. What happened… It wasn’t your fault.” However delicately phrased, Gambit shied from hearing it. Brown hair fell over his face as he sought to hide behind his arms. In response, he only hummed. 

“Ororo asked me to see your case personally. I will oblige her.” 

Bishop was uncomfortable witnessing the conversation. He could not imagine anything more awkward than staying, an intruder into a relationship to which he was attached by a thin thread. Gambit was in need of a friend’s love and reassurance, in private. He backed towards the door, having informed Gambit of the most pressing change to his situation. His task was done. Ororo could divulge her role in it and Gambit and Bishop could discuss details when he was feeling up to it. 

LeBeau lifted his head. Vaguely shocked, he considered Bishop’s change of heart without fully understanding. “Darling, thank you. Remy won’t forget this. I’ll pay you back best as I am able, whatever you want. If there’s a price—“

“There’s one thing.”

“Anything.” Gambit offered confidently. 

“ _Don’t_ call me darling.”

.•° ✿ °•.

Near midnight, Bishop entered the library. 

The chandeliers slept as most of Kaer Morhen, the only light dancing in the room coming from a groggy oil lamp by the entrance. It flickered unreliably to show there was someone there, not to guide their way, and stretched the witcher into a giant along the shadowed floor. He cut a lean, elegant figure. The wolf's sleepclothes reached past his thigh and a thick robe, patterned at the lapels, tied at his waist, brushed the stone in the library. It was sewn by Scoia'tael artisans from beyond the Blue Mountains, in lands reclaimed by elves and dwarves, with which Kaer Morhen traded. Bishop's cat eyes made out most of the room in manageable darkness. He was loud in clearing his throat. 

Beady red eyes, the rest of the faerie's body lost to the dark, glittered like the runes on Bishop's silver sword. He shambled into the moonlit corridor between two lines of shelves, book open in hand. The moon further suggested the outline of his body beneath his overlong nightshirt, laced at the collar. 

"Hope I didn't wake you." LeBeau joked. His voice soft, serene, retired from the day's hammier production. Unruly hair fought against the campaign to force it out of his eyes, wide sleeve sliding down his arm. His nails were long and dirty, picked at, bit. He was tired. 

"I was trying to find a book on spells that may result in long-term sleep." LeBeau explained. Bishop drifted towards him and begun to make out the words in the manuscript. He handed it to the witcher. Bishop's fingers were calloused, strengthened by swordplay, nails trimmed and clean. Kaer Morhen afforded many luxuries Bishop indulged in; the space to keep robes, bathe, and wander the halls if sleep evaded him. He turned the pages. The book was written on disease spellements, cures for brain fever, ear aches, and insomnia. "There was a book about faeries, too. Didn't want to read it."

"Scared?" Bishop prompted. The man fiddled with the ladder utilized to retrieve books on a higher level. He tapped it, it moved a few feet down the aisle. 

"Of learning? Always." 

In the dark, it was effortless to remind himself that LeBeau was magic. He did not manipulate it as sorcerers did, he _was._ That's why he could mend clothes with dust from his fingertips, heal conditions that were permanent on the average human, vacantly—condemn a city to sleep. Untethered he would be dangerous. A faerie lord who could walk back the tribulations of time on organic materials for something as absurd as his vanity could do untold damage with his whole heart. But Bishop knew the ties that did bind. His father, Ororo, his land. Faeries could not lie. 

"I could tell you what you are, if it would help." 

LeBeau studied him with the same inquisitive eyes that roamed the spines of the witcher collection. Upon finding Bishop less simply deciphered than faded cursive, he stroked the bound pages. 

"I think knowing would unmake me."

Bishop disagreed, but did not argue. Knowing could only make one more, not less, just as practiced, varied needlework made finer robes. What tinge the world would take if Bishop did not know what he was, if he looked at his slit pupils and golden eyes in the mirror without recognition? _Mutant. Monster._ It was the greatest comfort in the world to have a word, a set of constants, a shred of meaning, and to realize it was a foundation upon which to build, unspool.

"If you don't plan to sleep, you can join me in plotting our route to Siahna." Bishop plucked a map from his belt. He brought it to a large, sturdy desk and rolled it out, using ink pots and other discards left about by the younger witchers. It showed the Continent in full, Bishop fingered Kaer Morhen in the mountains of Kaedwen, and Siahna bordering the Mahakam mountains between Temeria and Aedirn. The Kaedweni landscape was a blend of cold cities and colder forests, their proximity to Kaer Morhen in the Blue Mountains beget a familiarity with witchers, though little fondness. Settlers avoided the witcher's keep, spread vile rumors about their guild. Bishop followed the Kaedwen High Road to Flotsam, a port city in Temeria, then down to marshy Siahna. 

"The way through Kaedwen is clear."

Bishop's Path rarely kept him in the cold country. He knew the safest way out and who along the way would not turn him away. 

"There's plenty of inns hugging the High Road that will host us overnight and stock up, but we will need to set up camp in the wilderness from time to time, more if we're light on coin. Manage your expectations." 

"Eugh." The faerie lord whined. Bishop wasn't sure how he had made it to Kaer Morhen. The more the witcher elaborated on the trials of their journey, the more Gambit wilted. 

"Entry through Flotsam would be ideal. We should offer to meet the Arezuta envoy there." It was different, Bishop thought, to say outloud the things he usually mapped in his head. Useful, even, to hear his own voice and decide if he made sense. 

Gambit grimaced. "About that. I told Ororo I already had a witch in mind, from Aretuza, long since graduated with top marks. She lives in Flotsam with her wife, another capable mage, and two children."

"One of those friends you passed on your way to Kaer Morhen." Bishop recounted flatly. 

"You know, my friend, the road is long. You should try to like me." He pinched the area around Flotsam and compared the space between his fingers to the scale at the bottom of the map. 

"Less than a month if we travel swiftly. I am indifferent towards you." Bishop said. He continued to contemplate their route. No doubt LeBeau did not carry any of his famous coin on him, so they would have to borrow from the treasury, maybe even take a contract halfway to Flotsam. 

"If you disliked me because of what I did in Siahna, I would give you a wide berth. What I did _is_ unforgivable, but you dislike me because I'm shallow and conceited." Gambit pressed, mouth a tight little line. 

"Perceptive, too." Bishop should have kept mum, but like a splinter in his hand Gambit would only pierce deeper into his skin if he ignored him.

"I am flawed, Master Witcher, just as you are. If we were friends, I could overlook your fault."

"And what would that fault be?"

Gambit leaned back against the heavy desk, one foot raised on its side. His arm cut the map, guarded it from any further of Bishop's attempts to pay it greater mind. 

"You're amused by me. An incurable affliction."

Bishop touched his neat beard and prepared to dispute it, but found the corners of his mouth almost imperceptibly upturned. It wasn't unusual by any means. He smiled at children, sunsets, and the occasional adorable animal. LeBeau was a bit removed from those. Perhaps he _was_ amused by the faerie lord, in the same way cow-tipping was a sport, ambiguously. 

"I will leave it up to you to decide when we depart. You _are_ still recuperating from hypothermia and frostbite." Bishop avoided. He could have thrown him clear off the desk for some peace of mind, but the thought itself was nice enough. 

"That? Rictor fixed me right up." He waved his hand dismissively. No mention of his faerie constitution. Bishop owed Shatterstar more of his breakfast, or it could all be part of the faerie's penchant for creating distance from what he was. "We can leave first thing in the morning."

"We cannot, as we would need to pack and get a full night's sleep." He looked out the window. The moon tiptoed higher in the sky. Dawn was hours out, but not enough to justify following LeBeau's impulse. "The day after." 

"You drive a hard bargain, my friend, but you're the expert." He sighed. It was somewhat better than _darling._

They shook hands. 


	5. What’s in a Name?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Remy’s true name is not Remy LeBeau, nor is it Gambit. This is addressed later.  
> \- Winnie’s name comes from Animal Crossing.

He was awake before dawn bled over the mountains. He dressed in his winter armor. Whetted swords over studded doublet over furs. Rolling restlessness in his gut ate up his breakfast, left him a nervous hunger, dry like yesterday's bread in his mouth. He headed down to the stables with a lump in his throat and his travel bags in hand. 

Bishop's stallion, a Nilfgaardian thoroughbred, was named Winnie. He acquired the horse as payment for a job in Aedirn, from a drunken lout too in his royal cups to handle the breed. His blue-black hair, thick and lustrous, like the sky with all its stars missing. He was a good horse. Fast and fierce, only occasionally frightened off by a gnarly-looking branch. When Bishop let out an ear-splitting whistle he always cantered back to the witcher's side. He accepted Bishop's offering of oats and let him affix leather armor and saddlebags to his body. With both hands Bishop pushed the bit past his teeth and pitched the reins over his neck. 

An ugly dream lingered. 

He pet the animal's velvet snout. Anxiety coiled in his chest began to fade. He wasn't afraid of the journey or the contract. The slithering beast nervously burrowing between his ribs was an old brute. It beckoned unsettling sensations, like being scrutinized by an invisible audience. Silence helped. A moment to collect his thoughts. Worldlessness helped. Owing no one an explanation. Winnie helped. He was, after all, a very good horse. 

Breathing stung, the coldest hours rode in before dawn like the Wild Hunt. Felt good to let it in. Cleansing. Chilled leather gloves sheltered his face and returned warm exhales to his skin. He was safe. He was capable. His name was Lucas Bishop and he was in control. 

.•° ✿ °•.

From Gambit's sick-room window he could see the stables. He watched Bishop disappear beneath the thatched roof. 

Julio—the name Star used for Rictor, softly—examined him one final time. He helped him pack. He was a kind boy, gruff in a wholesome way. His lover, the red-haired wolf witcher, preferred not to engage with Gambit at all. He blamed Gambit for his lover's short-lived illness, or he disliked faeries. He wouldn't be in the keep long enough for it to matter. 

Bishop liked Julio too. Enough to stop him from hurting himself healing Remy. He did not like Remy. The two could be related. In the short time he was conscious after they found him in the snow, he understood they had saved his life at great risk to themselves. It irked Remy a little that a man with the power to help him undo the greatest mistake he had ever made thought he was a dud. Not that he had put his best self on display for Bishop, who arrived too late to hear him sing. He hadn’t felt impressive dying from the cold, shaking on the sickbed, and rummaging like a rat in the cupboard, things the witcher _had_ seen. Yet. It stung, like his hand against the glass pane. 

"The witchers on kitchen duty are asleep, but I brought you some sausage so you won't leave on an empty stomach." Rictor pulled him to the mattress. He jiggled the piece of meat in Remy's face until he took it. He ate it without appetite, without tasting it. Remy smiled for Rictor. The boy had dried his travel leathers and left them by the fire so they would be warm when he was ready to dress, erasing the memory of the last time he'd worn them, snow and darkness bearing down on him. 

Bishop was the first thing he saw after his snow burial. It had convinced Remy he was dead, and Bishop the herald of his afterlife. Gentle slopes of his face; strong brow, eyes like drops of honey, high cheekbones, beautiful round nose, and lovingly trimmed beard, the sum of an angel's parts. He carried the sun upon his back and it glowed around his head, braiding light into his hair like silk ribbons. Men like him didn't live in the Blue Mountains, but as kings in the Continent, and between the pages of storybooks— but he had been wrong. Gambit wasn't dead, and a luckier poet would get to know Bishop well enough to immortalize him some day. One he _liked._ He had written songs to thank men for their friendship, their love, but he didn't know how to write one to thank Bishop for saving his life.

"I have something for you, Rictor." Remy smiled. The druid, at least, he could thank presently. 

"What's that?" 

"I am a source of raw magical energy. Ororo's mages borrowed it to complete difficult spells, or charge their artifacts, like the one you wear around your neck." Remy toyed with the opaque crystal. "I would be really happy if I could do that for you, Julio." 

Shatterstar bristled in his dingy corner. Jealous posturing was mismatched to the witcher who so clearly held the druid's love, and other people had done a more threatening job of it in Remy's flirtatious, long life. Julio gave him his name, and though it did not bind him to a promise with each uttering as Remy's would, the faerie treasured it.

"That's not necessary, Remy, but it would help me if there are any further injuries this winter." Julio considered. He nodded. 

Like a bucket dipping into a well, Julio drew from his power along their joined hands. It was a prickle beneath Remy's skin. The young man circled his wrist and moved up, rotating the arm out. Blue vessels like river systems glowed beneath his pale skin. From his heart came a pulse that emblazoned his veins as molten iron through a forge. He was sand rolling in Rictor's fingers, settling into glass. Echoes of the man ricochetted on the banks of their link. _Wow._ He heard. _That's a lot._ The crystal flashed pale pink. In a breath it was full. At capacity, a moment's hesitation sent Remy's power elsewhere, bursting between them like a Dragon's Dream bomb, dust flaring into their faces. Julio's witcher stood with sign and sword, but at the sound of the druid's laughter he shrank. 

"It tickled." Julio demonstrated for Star, calling the magic in the crystal forth. It raised the hairs on his arms. Enough for winter, perhaps even longer. Remy puffed up like a peacock.

But pink light had washed the walls of his father's great hall. Pride curdled into shame. 

Rictor retrieved the lute. It was stored inside a black case. Having slung travel bags over his leathers, Remy was ready to honor the bequeathed instrument. Kaer Morhen's generosity, a new lute and their best witcher to aid him, he would not forget. The guild never took payment until the job was done, which Remy did not comprehend, though it certainly worked to his benefit, being short of coin. He would shower the keep in crowns after that ugly business was done, freshly grateful. 

Rictor embellished the gift of the lute with a smile. 

"Ready?"

.•° ✿ °•.

"Ready." Said Bishop to his brother. They knocked back small glasses of liquor. Nilfgaardian stuff, somewhere between vinegar and necrophage blood, liked to tease a hole in the esophagus. 

Summers hollered and shook the empty glass into the snow. It warmed Bishop's throat and belly. His brother in arms chose the spirit well, good for winter and for blackouts on-demand at different doses. 

"Can I have some?" Jubilee chimed. She swiped for the bottle. Summers held it over his head, without the stopper it sloshed over the rim. 

"Not on your life! You're practically twelve." 

"Sixteen! The potions we brew all take alcohol anyway."

"Don't let Banshee hear you say that." Perplexed, Bishop shook his head. "Brewing burns out the alcohol." 

She crossed her arms defensively and bickered about her age and ingrained tolerance for toxic substances. He was glad she had come to see him off. Jubilee might not be in the keep when he returned. She had received the go-ahead from her father to see the world as a witcher-made for the first time. He had asked her to meet him in Novigrad. No coincidence there. Jubilee glowed when she talked about the free city. Connected throughout the whole continent, by land and sea, trade and religion, it appealed to the young. Bishop would miss her. He wished her a safe hunt and for all the world to match her grand expectations.

Early morning anxiety abated, Bishop felt better about descending Killer Trail, leaving behind his comfortable winter. He should have spent more time in the hot springs beneath the castle. His one regret. 

"Here comes the lord." Summers announced, eye on the doors that let out into the bailey. Jubilee pushed her body over the stable fence to see. She trumpeted a snippet of song Bishop recognized as a wedding march. 

"Quick, pretend we were gossiping about him!" She whooped. 

The white-haired witcher stacked their glasses. He capped the bottle and hid it behind a wooden beam. Summers was selfish with their liquor but not with their coin. He had given Bishop plenty to reach Siahna in near luxury. He expected the faerie lord to triple it. 

Though the travel leathers were the same LeBeau couldn't look more different than the day they'd met. He had color in his skin, for one, and a smile that could light a match. He strode across the courtyard, Rictor and Shatterstar behind him. 

"Which one is mine?" He asked, referring to the horses.

"None." Bishop said, grabbing Winnie's reins and leading him out the box. "Can't ride down the slopes in winter. If need be, we will get you a horse in town." 

"If need be?" 

Bishop walked. The sun was coming up and the ground would be hard for only a while longer. Winnie snorted in agreement to his master's thoughts. He bobbed his head, happy to walk, excited to run once the ground was level. They needed to take advantage of Ororo's blessed weather. He shook hands with Summers, Rictor, Shatterstar, and Jubilee. He didn't wait to make sure the faerie lord followed, but heard his voice in frantic goodbyes. 

It was the witcher's way to leave Kaer Morhen in minimal ceremony, despite the likelihood they might never return. 

"Wait, Bishop, _if_ need be?"

.•° ✿ °•.

In Bishop's youthful days, Killer Trail was besieged with obstacles and traps. A proving ground for young witchers fit to leave the walls of Kaer Morhen. Agility, stamina, and good memory were key in leaping, ducking, and weaving around the Killer. Summers had cleared the trail in the name of trade, added another inner bailey to the keep, and moved the Killer's quagmire _inside_ the guild's walls. Wouldn't want a beheaded merchant on the witchers' conscience. Summers liked it called _Kaedwen Trail_ , for appearances, yet he could be crowned guiltiest in ceding to the misnomer. 

Killer Trail, admittedly slippery and tenebrous as all mountain trails, was just a trail. 

"This is _not_ the way I came." Gambit said. Baffled, he dragged his feet in the dirt. He had taken the merchant's route that went _by_ the Blue Mountains and only segmented in the general direction of Kaer Morhen. Under heavy snow, the path was lost, the mountains covered the sun, and Gambit was thrown into freezing disarray. 

He marveled at the beauty he had been unable to accrue taking the back door. Trees as tall as the keep walls climbed towards the cloud-tipped mountain peaks, a few stubborn giants reaching heights where no living thing should breathe. Kaer Morhen was long behind them and still he could still see its battlements like massive teeth inching to bite the sky. 

Gambit positioned himself against the bark of a tree lining the trail. It was cool and rough against his bare palms. He wore no gloves if he could stand it. Past it, battalions of the tree's kindred guarded animal tracks that had enticed his eyes. Strange sight, as animals avoided roads unless they were hungry. Remy held the lute strap tighter, it did not bounce off his back as he darted across to study the tracks. He dropped close to the ground and showed trees wide enough to eclipse his silhouette favor. They were lynx tracks. Rare in Siahna, marsh that it was, but Gambit had been around the Continent doing odd jobs for his father's business all his life— the business of theft. 

A single lynx this far up the mountain in the middle of mating season was looking for something. Sick? Starving? He would have pawed the snow someplace, seeking grass and sleeping rabbits— Ah.

There. Scraped bark. Gambit's eyes travelled up. The lynx watched him from a thick, stripped branch, sprawled like a domesticated cat on their owner's recliner. Not sick. Not even hungry. Blood matted his muzzle. He blinked, sleepily, down at Gambit. Just a curious, adventurous thing, trying its luck on the mountain. 

Gambit retraced his steps until he stood at the trail. 

Bishop had stopped. Golden gears moved in his eyes, spurred by peculiar thoughts. Fixed in his gaze, Gambit wondered what the witcher saw. He fiddled with the soft band of skin around his finger where his ring had always been. 

"How long were you off the trail?" Bishop asked. His cheek twitched as he clenched his jaw.

"Two minutes, maybe?" Gambit estimated. He reached to rub his neck, then his face, but stopped before he could touch either. 

Bishop looked up. He hummed. 

It had taken him thirty-two seconds to sense LeBeau was gone. More rattling than his galavanting for no apparent reason into the same forest that had swallowed him once. In spring, Bishop heard dew gliding off a leaf at spitting distance. Faerie lords couldn't sneak about him. Shouldn't. 

Thirty-two seconds.

Maybe he was finally old. 

"Don't wander off." He said, softer than intended. He pulled Winnie's reins. Thoughtful and distracted, too much to be properly angry about the man's recklessness, he angled his head as he walked, listening. On the dirt, LeBeau's boots creaked. On the snow, with intent, they made no sound at all. It wasn't magic. He was trained in stealth. 

_Smugglers_ , Ororo had said. You could pay off a lot of people to keep an operation like that going, or you could be very, very discreet. 

Not a word he immediately associated with the man, but it had not been long since they'd met. Even now, as he tested Bishop's patience edging outside the path, it could all be an elaborate front. 

LeBeau caught up to him.

"Wanna play I-Spy?" 

Suffice to say, Bishop did not. 

.•° ✿ °•.

The land around the Blue Mountains was desolate. Bishop and Gambit made camp close to the trail. They built a small fire and sat up in their bedrolls to keep watch in shifts. The faerie lord didn't sleep at all that first night and looked grateful when it was his turn. Gambit spoke a lot, and Bishop ignored and encouraged him as his mood dictated. Too often he regretted encouraging. Gambit could talk for _hours_. 

When he wasn’t talking, he sang. About court intrigue, romance, and betrayal. Playful forest spirits, swashbucklers, and melancholic sorcerers. Anything except the cold and the snow, all his stories were set in _passionate summer_. Lyrical tales about princes and servants falling and rising from their stations. That was not entirely unpleasant. Winnie liked to hear them. 

A routine formed. They walked, they talked, they camped. Bishop suspected the faerie slept on his watch, because he never did while wrapped in his bedroll. Infuriatingly, Gambit continued to try his luck in the woods when he fancied, often while Bishop loaded Winnie after dismantling their camp. _Don't wander off_ , Bishop would tell him, and he would divert him with a fantastical version of his excursion, complete with good and bad omens in the shape of woodland animals, something Bishop accredited to both the _faerie_ thing and the _lordling_ thing. The dream-like quality of these encounters tempted Bishop with the theory he was sleeping under a tree whenever he was gone.

"It's an auspicious day." Gambit prophesied. He had freed his lute from its case and strummed a stuttered tune, mimicking, changing the notes and starting from the beginning, composing. Bishop wasn't sure who told him he could have the thing, but at least he took care of it better than the humidity at Kaer Morhen would have. With the faerie, it would never rot. 

"Bluebirds tell you that?" He rode on Winnie so he could run the horse from time to time. He would get antsy otherwise. He never rode faster or farther than would take LeBeau from his line of sight. 

"A corpulent fox, in fact." Gambit jested. "Good fortune awaits us. You will sleep well tonight."

"True enough for a two-bit soothsayer. We will reach a town with an inn today, something you would have known." Bishop shrugged. 

The music came to an offended halt, as did the faerie. 

"Sweet Melitele, you wound an innocent man! I went the wrong way up. I don't know what to expect here."

Bishop stopped Winnie. He grabbed hold of the saddle's horn to speak to Gambit. 

"You're a capable tracker. You know when a trail turns into a road a town cannot be far off."

"A compliment?! Bishop— Your full name, please, I would bless you to commemorate it. Bishop of Aldersberg? Of Rivia?." He gave a nimble bow and twirl and played an upbeat tune he'd heard before, a piece called _Divinity._

"Bishop was my mentor's last name. Now it is mine. Lucas Bishop. Curse it or bless it as you will, lordling." It was a good name, though it earned him strangers questioning his _piety_. Kadee hadn't been pious either. Spiritual, maybe, but not religious. Melitele, the Elder Gods, the Church of the Eternal Fire, they were not for Bishop to judge, but neither to worship. 

He prepared to dismount to give his companion a break from lagging behind the steed. As his foot left the first stirrup, he glanced at the faerie. 

LeBeau's fingers floated over his parted lips. He traced the shape of Bishop's first name without sound. He knew it meant _more_ to a faerie to have it, full and true. With the same hand he plucked a vibrant melody from the strings of his lute. It sounded like… Syllables. A word. 

_Lucas_. 

Bishop faced the back of Winnie's head. He sat straighter on his saddle and clicked his heels against the stallion's middle. The animal trotted obediently. Heat creeped up Bishop's spine, knob after knob, and enveloped his head. It simmered through his face. A tart taste watered his mouth. He was— Afflicted. Rough winter nights could wear down even a hardened mercenary. He hadn't meditated in more than a week. He could alleviate the itch of sensory overload in town. 

The lute continued to call his name. 


	6. Sleep Well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Mentions of family death and people being assholes to kids.

Midday, Bishop and Gambit crossed the stone bridge, past the mill and fields that employed most of the townspeople. Though winter, they busied caring for the animals and the tools of their trade. They watched the strange pair enter the town, chattered amongst themselves, before thankfully keeping their noses out of their business. Two swords at his back and the Wolf emblem proudly displayed over his armor, one's identity was clear. 

Snow capped the red-roofed houses built tightly around the road like wild mushrooms on the roots of trees. It filled the gaps between the stones on the paved roads. Every fogged window and smoking chimney was aglow with fire. Colorful banners adorned the spaces between house and house, their roofs dripped icicles like frosting overflowing. Iron lanterns waited for darkness from metal posts. Footsteps tread the road. From the baker to the blacksmith, from the tavern home, each telling a sleepy little story of daily life in the quiet mountainside town, streets were clear for dinner. 

Gambit's stomach complained. They had walked a long time and they could not carry enough food to justify breakfast on the road. At his father's court, he would feast on buttered bread and camembert to wake his appetite for dinner. The cooks would serve rich soups, mouth-watering meats, and any dessert Gambit liked—Nothing too sweet. He preferred savory dessert. It would be difficult to find anything like that in this place, unless it was at the local lord's manor home. 

He could probably eat plenty of mutton stew at the inn. It was a childhood favorite. And chicken livers, despite himself. His father liked to tell a story whenever they ate pâté. Once, when Remy was seven, Jean-Luc had found him eating raw livers stolen from the kitchen in his room. _As many as his tiny hands could carry_ , he would say. He found the story amusing. No one else did, Remy included. He shuddered to think of the faces around the dining hall, struggling not to gag, as they pictured the faerie child pushing raw meat past his flat teeth. His father described the riveting antics of a young boy, he didn't think anything about him was abnormal. Remy knew they thought him capable of eating more than chickens raw. In their heads, he could just as easily tear into their human flesh. 

"We're almost there." Bishop reassured. His voice thinned the mist of unwanted memories. 

Gambit appeared exhausted. Not knowing he was gripped by melancholy, Bishop assumed weariness had caught up to him. Bishop was an experienced traveller, and from Gambit's stories on the road the man was as well. He expected him to know how to travel in a carriage, with a retinue of servants, and was surprised to find instead that Gambit travelled alone, not unlike him. 

The inn promised a warm bath and a bed. They would fix the lordling's shadowed eyes. 

As they neared the inn marked by a crest-shaped sign on a wrought iron hanging, they came upon the town notice board. On it were six pieces of parchment nailed in order of importance. Announcements of births, deaths, and sales. Bishop saw no wax seals among the pages, but he took a closer look anyway. These notice boards were how he got most of his work. A local lord or well-meaning citizen would offer a reward to any man who could kill the creature hunting their neighbors. Sometimes, they warned about strange events no one had yet linked to a specific beast, so they did not know to call for a witcher. Bishop recognized the symptoms of a town under attack and the nearest coin purse. 

The board was bare of such indicators. Just the usual fear-mongering. Stay out of the woods because they're haunted. Don't feed your children after midnight. A true rest stop. 

"This the place?" Gambit bounced on his heels. Bishop hitched Winnie outside. He opened the door for them and the confirmation widened LeBeau's smiling mouth. 

Bishop had visited so many inns in his long life, they'd all begun to blur together. It was quiet inside. Four tables full and smelling of hot food in the entrance room, a large fireplace, and a counter that tripled as a bar, a kitchen, and the welcome committee. The owner greeted them there. 

"Master Witcher! What can we do for you today?" The woman wiped her hands in her apron. She was short, freckled, with the accent of a Skelliger. Friendly. 

"Have you rooms available?" Bishop asked, four good coins left his purse. Gambit fiddled with the twine-tied herbs on display, but smiled at the woman when she glanced his way. "Two, to be precise." 

She summoned a small book from her bosom and skimmed quickly through the pages. There were more names than he expected to see in winter. 

"One, sadly. Been busy this season." She jumped from Bishop back to Gambit. He had tied the loose twine into bows. "One bed enough?" 

"I wouldn't mind. We have our bedrolls and if I stack them on the floor it will be like the real thing." LeBeau chimed, flushed with optimism. A noble, but unnecessary offer. Bishop meditated overnight, sitting straight as a sword. 

"Bed's big enough for two, unless you're a kicker." The innkeeper teased LeBeau. Keys jangled in her hand and scraped across the counter. 

The faerie lord clasped both hands over his heart and gasped as if struck by an arrow. 

"You see right through me, my lady. I fear for the safety of the witcher's shins." 

Bishop grabbed the keys and half his coin. LeBeau squeezed between Bishop and the innkeeper, tugging at his lute strap. 

"My lady, you wouldn't be in need of a bard for tonight's entertainment?" He asked hopefully. 

"Which way is the room?" Bishop asked just above LeBeau's chestnut head. 

"Straight down the hall, up the stairs, first door on your left. And as a matter of fact, I do!" The innkeeper chuckled, answering them both. "If Master Witcher can spare you, there's a free meal—with dessert— in it for you." 

Incredibly, LeBeau aimed round, pleading eyes to Bishop's rounder, incredulous pair. It was one thing for a stranger to mistake their dynamic, but even in jest he didn't expect LeBeau to take his opinion of what he should or shouldn't do with anything but contempt. LeBeau, on his part, believed that so long as Bishop was paying for the inn, travelling ceaselessly on his behalf, and putting up with a lot that wasn't on his contract, he deserved a little deference. Magnanimous of his mischief as he was. 

"I don't see why not." Bishop said truthfully. 

LeBeau spun to bow to the woman and slammed his lute right into Bishop's gut, taking his good will with the air from his throat. His studded doublet took the brunt, but irked him enough to stalk off without the lordling. He had to unload Winnie, feed and water him, and take him to the stables before nightfall.

LeBeau followed him anyway, shouting promises to the uncaring dining customers of his return. 

The room was where the innkeeper said it would be and the key opened the door. The two men went slack against the wall once it was closed. Differences aside, they were equally exhausted. 

"I'll lie on the bed with you if you don't think it's weird." LeBeau said. 

Bishop's toes hurt inside his boots. Every time he moved his head, his neck ached all the way to his jaw. 

"I won't need the bed tonight. I have to mediate." Bishop sighed. He released his swords and slid along the wall to set them on the dresser. If he were alone, he would have already stripped naked and laid down at the speed of a kikimora returning to its nest. Wintering at Kaer Morhen had made him soft. He wanted to wash the frost out of his hair, his clothes, but most of all he wanted to sleep with a pillow and a mattress under him. 

"I mean right now. Take a nap." 

"You will ruin your night's sleep." Bishop protested. 

LeBeau gave him a look. 

Oh. Busted.

Bishop knew LeBeau didn't sleep. Never slept, in fact. Not the first night they'd been together, or the next. At first it was strange. He knew LeBeau could be unconscious, and that without lying or sitting down he could tire, but he couldn't close his eyes and doze off. It wouldn't have been polite to ask why he pretended. Because he was used to it, because he wanted to appear human.

"You would be the first guy I ever slept with without… sleeping with." 

"An honor." Bishop said, bemused. "No siblings, then?"

The lordling shook his head.

"Dad never married. Won't ever, I think. Melitele never offered him another son like me, either. Do witcher children have sleepovers?" 

"When we're children, we sleep in a large hall together, low in the keep, where the hot springs warm the walls. In my mentor's days witcher children were not allowed toys or encouraged to form bonds. She raised me differently. All of us. We were told it was okay to cry. To hold each other if we were scared. The oldest among us were expected to call the witcher-made if it got bad." Bishop's childhood flickered behind his closed eyes. There were a lot of cold nights, but he was never alone. His mentor— his mother was always there. His Kadee. Before she gave him a sword, she had taken his hand. She had let him be a vulnerable child seeking refuge in her arms. It made him a better man. A nobler warrior. He wanted to be like her. Honest. Fair. As much as the world would let him be. 

"My dad used to stay up as long as he could." LeBeau whispered after a beat of silence. "I couldn't sleep and I was scared of the dark. Some combination, huh? He would bounce me on his knee until he passed out. He was so tired at court people thought I was leeching his energy with my magic baby powers."

He wiggled his fingers. Great evil toddler.

"I used to cry a lot when I was a boy." Bishop confessed. An eye for an eye. A story much too personal for a tale much too intimate. "My mentor didn't know what to do. She used to make funny faces. Stretch her mouth, pull on her lids, anything to make me laugh. Sometimes Burnum, a Cat witcher, would make shadow puppets on the walls." 

Burnum and Kadee had brought Bishop into the order. They had brought Shard, his sister, in the same way. Out of dozens of children, they had given them special care and attention. They were their's. They took responsibility for their safety and education. He bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood. He remembered the good things, like they would want him too, not that they were dead, and dead, and dead.

"Did he know how to do a dog?" 

" _Never_ ask him to do a dog." Bishop said gravely. They looked at each other, sharing things they didn't have to and probably shouldn't, and laughed. 

They finally pushed off the wall and surveyed the room. The bed was big enough for two, barely, and the covers were blessedly thick and heavy. At the end of the bed was a chest for storage, across a wardrobe, beside it a small table, and above the headboard two shelves containing an oil lamp and a single tattered book. The window washed the room in blue light. No holes on the walls and ceiling let the cold air inside. It might as well have been paradise. 

"Do you need help with that?" LeBeau asked. Bishop was stripping off his armor a piece at a time and using the space in the chest, though he would have preferred a mannequin to hang it on. 

"No, thank you." All of Bishop's armor was light-weight and designed so that he could put it on and take it off himself. Witchers did not keep squires and were expected to travel alone. Nonetheless, they had a bad habit of travelling with sorcerers, bards, and at least one mix of the two that Bishop was aware of, the least well-kept secret of their order. 

They dropped on the bed together. Bishop couldn't stay very long or afford to fall asleep. He had Winnie to take care of. The mattress was stuffed with feathers. Even above the covers it was warmer than his bedroll. LeBeau burrowed beneath facing Bishop and pulled them over his ears. He shivered. Bishop would do the same if it wouldn't make him too comfortable. His long lashes already blinked languidly. He closed his eyes for a moment. Forced them open. Closed them again. His broad chest rose and fell, unrestricted by armor. He hadn’t laid next to someone in a long time without carnal interest either. In a bed this small, LeBeau’s hand grazed his arm. His breath fluttered the covers. 

“I didn’t ask you… About your name.”

LeBeau hummed. He poked his nose above the sheets.

“Remy LeBeau is not your true name, or you wouldn’t give it out so freely.” Curiosity would keep Bishop awake if other things wouldn’t. He reached for the boots, kept off the bed for cleanliness sake, raised his leg, and unlaced them on his back. 

“It’s the name my Daddy gave me, so it’s as true as any, but yeah, nobody can toy with it.” 

“Were you born knowing your true name, chose it, were given it…?” 

“Hmm. It’s something we _know._ Intuitively. I know it like I know where my hands are when my eyes are closed. My father knows it, the wizards that sealed me knew it—but they almost all died from old age when I was still a squirt.” LeBeau smiled sleepily. “Did you want it, Lucas? I think you oughta at least buy Remy a drink first.” 

Bishop freed Gambit’s pillow from underneath him and bonked him over the head with the soft mass. The man cackled and crossed his elbows to protect from the next fuzzy blow. 

“See if I take an interest in you again.” 

He sat up, feeling the slightest bit refreshed. He came that close to napping in the middle of the day, something he had not been guilty of since he was fourteen. He had, without realizing, begun to take off his boots rather than merely loosening them. He was right to trust LeBeau’s powers to get on his nerves would liven him better than coffee. 

“I’m going to take Winnie to the stables.”

“Too cold for him to be out there on the post.” LeBeau agreed. He puckered his lips. “Give him lots of kisses for me.”

“Very well. Shall I kick you in the behind now, or after Winnie asks?” Bishop snorted. 

“Oh, Bishop. Delay pain, always delay pain.” 

.•° ✿ °•.

By the time Bishop got back from the stables, night had fallen on the inn. Keeping Winnie overnight had cost more than the room even after a lot of haggling with the stablehands. Nilfgaardian breeds were well behaved, they should have paid Bishop for the pleasure of housing his stallion, but that was neither here nor there. They would only be in town for a day. 

The inn windows glowed orange. LeBeau was already at the makeshift stage, tables rearranged so all could face him. He played a merry tune, but not a dancing one, something for the patrons to eat their food to without the need to sing along and clap. They were enraptured by the performer regardless. He had taken a bath and cleaned his clothes by the look of him. It was a far cry from the finery he’d been in before his last large audience, but the hair was out of his face.

“Master Witcher!” The innkeeper called. Bishop took his eyes off the faerie lord to attend her and was presented a plate of sweet-smelling stew and a buttered bun. “Hot meal for you, same as your bard. On the house.”

Bishop took the bowl. It warmed his hands pleasantly. He brought a large spoonful to his mouth at the keeper’s expectant motion. It tasted good, spicy. She was pleased when he swallowed. 

“Thank you for the food. Could I have a bath sent up as well? I would pay for that, of course.”

She waved her spoon at him. 

“And you should! I sent my poor husband up there with the double-wide tub just to hear you had gone off somewhere.”

Bishop hid his mouth behind his knuckles and coughed. LeBeau must have been excited to have that tub all to himself, as excited as Bishop was glad to have missed it. He liked the man better than not at all, but not quite enough to bathe with. 

“In an hour or two, I imagine, once you’ve gotten your fill of the songs?” She jut her chin towards the bard and wrote Bishop’s request in her ledger along with the cost. She took his gold. 

“Right now, if it’s possible.” Bishop said. Her pen stopped on the page and placed a very large period at the end of her sentence. 

“Had my suspicions it wasn’t like that, though a cute pair you make.” She put his coin in a jar labeled in handwriting so terrible Bishop couldn’t figure out what it said. “You can usually trust the witchers and the bards are chummy. Witchers and sorcerers, well, you’ve got some room to say it’s complicated.” 

“I…” He didn’t know how to take that. He could entertain jokes about him and Gambit, the flirting-that-wasn’t when they were alone, they would come up between any two travelers alone on the road, especially a pair as notorious as a witcher and a bard. He was pretty sure there was a ballad about it.

Bishop decided to exit gracefully with food and his peace. If it _was_ like that, he would stay to watch Gambit play or break his heart, the innkeeper thought. It was a little overly judgemental. Maybe he had enough private showings not to settle for public ones, or he really needed a bath, or he had other beneficial things to do. Bishop came upon their door. He was offended in the name of this alternate self, a paper man created in the innkeeper’s eyes, one who was _like that_ with Remy LeBeau, the least attractive prospect for a partner in all the Continent. 

He _really_ needed to meditate. 

.•° ✿ °•.

The food was good. The bath was better. A small man with arms as thick as Bishop's head brought up a tub and jugs of hot water. He spoke to the witcher with hardly a breath between his words, so hurried to be in and out of the room Bishop honored him with a prestigious place among the short list of men in the innkeeping industry who knew when a man just wanted to be alone with his hot water. 

He sunk into the bath with a groan. The water rippled but stayed inside its vessel. There were holes in the floorboard and he would hate to cause trouble for the people down below by spilling his bath. He could hear LeBeau sing. He wouldn't have to worry about the faerie lord coming back before he was done. 

Bishop submerged his head while the water was still warm. He wore his hair differently if he was travelling in winter, but LeBeau's contract had come too swiftly to make the arrangements to change it. He lathered his hands with a bar of soap that smelled like honey. He carefully massaged it into his skin to do away with the discomfort of snow and dirt from the road. 

He thought about Shard again. The pain seized his throat as when her passing was still fresh. It never got easier. He knew to some unhappy degree parents died, Kadee and Burnum would be gone some day, but Shard was his sister. His younger sister. He was never supposed to worry. 

Bishop gripped his ankles. Water rolled from his body, raining over the bath. He breathed loudly through his mouth, counting to ten, until it no longer came in pieces. 

Shard would be very upset if he felt anything close to pity for her. What she _would_ want is to be missed terribly, every day, and to mourn that she wasn't around to show him how she could be a better witcher than him. Bishop smiled faintly. 

It was freezing outside the bath. It flared the soreness of old injuries and hastened him to dress in his underclothes. The innkeeper's husband would come for the tub, so meditating could wait a moment longer while he hid beneath the covers. He tucked them in around his sides. Thinking less he heard LeBeau's melody more. He could wait for the man to come back, too. There would be no more interruptions in that event, not that Bishop would stop for anyone. 

He rested his eyes for a moment and fell asleep.


End file.
